Entrepreneurs sustain U.S. startup boom

Doug Grant launched a health care company some years ago. It failed, but he tried again, this time starting a financial-tech firm.

It failed too. But today, Grant is taking another shot, and his confidence is high. The idea for his new business really reflects who he is at his core, he says. It’s a startup that will sell bioengineered seafood, a healthy menu item for potential restaurant customers, a product created in a way that preserves fish populations and limits carbon emissions from industrial fishing. Grant’s enthusiasm stems from a love of the ocean forged by a youth spent fishing Alabama’s Gulf Coast.

“It’s not jut a business idea … to make money,“ Grant says. “You can make a lot of things in the world, but you can’t make more ocean.”

In October, Grant’s Atlantic Fish Co. introduced its protein-rich, bioengineered sea bass to potential customers and plans to begin selling to restaurants in the next two years.

A new-business boom

Grant, a U.S. Navy veteran with private-sector experience in product management, is one of thousands of Americans driving a U.S. entrepreneurship boom that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2015 and 2022, new-business applications in the U.S. doubled, increasing from 2.8 million to 5 million, according to the business consultancy Gusto.

In 2024 so far, an average 430,000 new-business applications per month are being filed in the United States, which represents a 50% increase over 2019, according to Eric Van Nostrand, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s chief economist.

What’s more, Americans’ entrepreneurial spirit has spread far beyond the well-known Silicon Valley tech hub. According to the global market information firm PitchBook, one-third of the world’s top 100 places to start a business are in the United States.

While San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Boston hold the top four spots on PitchBook’s list, Atlanta and Miami in the Southeast; Minneapolis and Columbus, Ohio, in the Midwest; and Denver and Salt Lake City in the West also rate high.

Supportive business climate

Grant found support for launching Atlantic Fish Co. in the research labs in and around Raleigh, North Carolina, (41st on the PitchBook list). Co-founder Trevor Ham had conducted research at Duke University in nearby Durham, and Grant’s team rented lab space to develop their product at Raleigh’s North Carolina State University.

For Angela Muhwezi-Hall, whose background as a career counselor in Los Angeles left her longing to improve opportunities for workers with no college-level academic experience, finding investors for a job-placement app outside a major U.S. city was a challenge. She and her sister, Deborah Gladney, used their own money to launch the app.

It was risky. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she quit her job and with her husband returned to her hometown of Wichita, Kansas, where they moved into her sister’s basement. The women dug into savings to build and launch the app (which they would eventually name WorkTorch) in April 2021.

“This was completely foreign to us, not just building a tech startup but having access to capital was really hard to figure out,” says Muhwezi-Hall, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Uganda. “We just really believed in what we were doing.”

Meet our Founders Deborah Gladney and Angela Muhwezi-Hall:
Sisters from Wichita, Kansas, Deborah and Angela, founded WorkTorch (formerly QuickHire) in April 2021 with the goal of helping people find work after the historic unemployment rates as a result of Covid-19. pic.twitter.com/zTnryUbAhT

— WorkTorch (@worktorch_) May 9, 2024

Eventually, a local newspaper story on the sisters and their app attracted an anonymous “angel” investor. Now WorkTorch connects 150,000 job seekers from all 50 U.S. states with employers. The business has expanded beyond recruitment to helping companies retain workers. And it partners with nonprofits that provide training to underserved communities.

“You may have to make sacrifices as founders,” Muhwezi-Hall says. “You have to figure out how to outlast your competition.”

As for Grant, he seems to possess the necessary perseverance. After launching Atlantic Fish Co. in 2022, he is working to raise funds for further research and development before his product undergoes U.S. Food and Drug Administration review and can be sold to restaurants. But he sees those past business failures as valuable experience now. “Having a startup and failing … that is really, really common” in the U.S., he says. It’s “a badge of honor” that gives him the patience to succeed now.